This is part 03 in my Seedbox From Scratch series. In this series I start at the most basic level, assuming no server or Linux skills. First we built the easiest and most basic seedbox possible, and now we will continue by adding some of the more basic features. Once you have your seedbox happily seeding torrents from your favorite private trackers, you’ll likely want to know how to get those files off your seedbox and back home. With most private trackers, you do not want to use BitTorrent from your home as well as your seedbox because it will hurt your ratio to download it (leech it) from the torrent cloud twice. Instead, you want your seedbox to do all the seeding, and get the files to your local computer in some other way. Today we learn what just might be the simplest way to do that, and we won’t need FTP. Many people are familiar with FTP (File Transfer Protocol), and this is indeed the most common way to get your movies, music, and other content back home. However, setting up an FTP server on your seedbox and using an FTP client to download them is a bit of a hassle. FTP is also not known to be all that secure unless you really know what you’re doing. SFTP In this tutorial, we’ll skip all that and instead use SFTP, which is already set up by default on your Ubuntu server. (See the first post in this series, Setting Up Your Very First Server, if you have not yet set up your server.) If you have SSH access to your seedbox, then by default you will have SFTPaccess to your seedbox. There are many ways to use SFTP, including the robust and cross platform FileZilla. But today I want to show Windows users how to install a little Windows Explorer extension that will make it easy to drag and drop the files from their seedbox to their local computer. The extension is called swish. Install Swish Start by downloading it from the Swish website. After installing the program, simply open up Windows Explorer and click on “Computer”. Then click on “Swish”: Next, click on “Add SFTP Connection”: You will be presented with a dialog box. Fill in the “Label” with any name you like. Fill in “Host” with the IP address of your server. The “User” is root. The “Path” is /var/lib/transmission-daemon/downloads/. This will create a new icon in Computer -> Swish named after whatever you named your seedbox. When you double click on that icon, you will be asked for your password, and then shown a list of files on your seedbox. You can drag the files to a location on your local computer.

This is part 02 in my Seedbox From Scratch series. In this series I start at the most basic level, assuming no server or Linux skills. We will first build the easiest and most basic seedbox possible, and then work our way up to some pretty advanced topics. Zero to seeding Today we go from a brand new server with a freshly installed operating system, to seeding torrents and building your ratio, in less than 5 minutes - even if you have no prior knowledge about any of this. To the novice, this can seem like an overwelming task. That’s why there are plenty of seedbox hosting companies willing to do it for you. But if you are willing to step out of your comfort zone for 5 minutes, I’ll show you how to bypass the middleman. (No disrespect to these companies, there are some really good seedbox hosting companies that add a lot of value. Most of them provide services beyond what you will get from me in these next five minutes.) What we are building A seedbox is just a server that is set up and used for BitTorrent activity. For our first seedbox, we are going to set up the Transmission BitTorrent client on the server. I wrote about setting up a server in the first post of this series. If you don’t know how or where to get a server, read that first and then come back here. OK, now that you have a freshly installed Ubuntu server and know how to use SSH to get to the root prompt, lets get a BitTorrent client installed on that server. I chose Transmission for the same reasons that the Ubuntu operating system chooses it as it’s default BitTorrent client. It is full featured, uses very little resources, and is simple to set up. It is also respected and white-listed at most private trackers. Lets do this Ready to go? Start your stop watch. ;-) Standard Ubuntu includes Transmission, but it can quickly become outdated. So the first thing we’ll do is add a Transmission repository to keep us up to date with the latest Transmission release (currently 2.51 at the time of this article being published). Add a repository Add the repository by copy/pasting this command into your Terminal or Putty and hitting enter. root@KATBOX001:~# aptitude install python-software-properties -y && add-apt-repository ppa:transmissionbt Add the BitTorrent Client Next we need to install the Transmission Daemon. This is the program that is always running in the background and giving love to your tracker ratios. It also includes the web interface. root@KATBOX001:~# aptitude update && aptitude install transmission-daemon -y So now that we have a BitTorrent client running, we need to control it somehow. Transmission comes with a simple web interface. To use it we have to edit a configuration file on the server. On Ubuntu, that file lives here: /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json Add a text editor To the Linux programmer and system administrator, a powerful text editor is their main tool. I use Vim. In my opinion, it has no equal. However, it has a slight learning curve and we won’t reach our goal of seeding in the next three minutes if we dive into Vim right now. Beginners are often encouraged to use Nano because it is simple and easy to get started with. You can find more help with Nano on the community help page. Let’s install Nano with this command. root@KATBOX001:~# aptitude install nano -y Update your password Nano is a simple command line text editor. You can start it and load up the file we want to edit with this command. root@KATBOX001:~# nano /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json There will be a lot of text. Use your arrow keys to move the cursor down to the line that looks something like this. "rpc-password": "{854eec4bf2c4086bdab219523efabac772c3ca80l.JIJGGc", The jumbled text will be different; it is the encrypted password. We’ll simply replace it with the new password that we want to use. Transmission is smart enough to detect the unencrypted plain text password and encrypt it. It will then rewrite this text file with the encrypted version of the password when Transmission exits. Change the password line to look like this, making sure to preserve the quotations and comma at the end. "rpc-password": "YourNewPassword", Open it to the world We need to change one more line in this settings file before we are done. Use your arrow keys to move the cursor down to the line that looks like this. "rpc-whitelist-enabled": true, Change the true to false. No quotes needed here, but leave the comma. "rpc-whitelist-enabled": false, In Nano, you save the file being edited by pressing Ctrl-O as can be seen at the bottom menu. It will then ask you where to save the file with File Name to Write: /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json. Just hit enter to save the file in the same place. To exit Nano, press Ctrl-X. Reload settings We still have to tell Transmission about these changes. We can do that by sending it this command: root@KATBOX001:~# invoke-rc.d transmission-daemon reload Next, we want to restart Transmission so it can write the encrypted password to the settings file: root@KATBOX001:~# /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon restart Done Now the web interface is available anywhere as long as you have the password you just set. You can get to the web interface in your browser by visiting http://xx.xx.xx.xx:9091/. (Obviously replacing xx.xx.xx.xx with yourserver’s seedbox’s real IP address). Enter transmission for the user name and then enter the password we just set in the settings file. Click “Open”, and load up a few torrents. Transmission’s web gui is a bit light on features, but it sure is cute. :) TaDa, your new server has magically become a seedbox in less than 5 minutes. You’re a rockstar! In the next installment of this series I’ll introduce a simple of way to get your media back to your home computer without resorting to FTP.

In this series, I’ll describe how any novice can become the ninja-admin of their own BitTorrent server. Notice I said “can”, not “will”. Developing any skill takes time and dedication; that said, getting started is a lot less scary than many assume. The first seedbox we build will be simple, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be powerful. Setting up your own seedbox is easier than you think, but first you need a remote Linux server. Start with a small server A good bet is to start with a small, quality server from Leaseweb. You can choose how much space you need and how much bandwidth you want to pay for. For this tutorial I purchased their smallest cloud server for 9 euros. This won’t get us very far with its default 500GB of data transfer and 40GB of disk space, but it is enough to get us started and demonstrate how easy this really is. Leaseweb is a good option for many reasons and is mostly what I use for my EU boxes, but you can use any server as long as you are careful to understand the bandwidth issues. I’ll write more about that later. Once you pick a server, choose to have the latest version of Ubuntu installed on it. Ubuntu is easy to get started with and has a huge amount of support on the web if you get stuck. After paying for the server, many hosting companies will simply send you a welcome email with the IP address and root password. Leaseweb does not send the password, but they do send the IP address in the email. You can find the root password of your new Leaseweb server in their Self Service Center (SSC). Select ‘Manage’: Now click ‘Show’ under billing information: Scroll down to show the root password: Once we have the IP address and root password we can send commands to the server using SSH. Connecting to the server from Mac or Linux Those of you who are lucky enough to be using Linux or Mac can simply fire up a Terminal and enter this command, replacing the ‘xx.xx.xx.xx’ with the IP address of your server. kat@fresh:~$ ssh [email protected] You will likely get a message saying something like “The authenticity of the host can’t be established.” This is fine because it is the first time we are connecting to the server. Type yes and then enter your password. Now you’re in. Feel the power? Connecting to the server from Windows On Windows you need to download a program to access your new server. A popular choice for many people using a Windows machine is called Putty. You can get it here. Start up Putty and enter [email protected] where it says, “Host Name (or IP address)”. (Obviously replacing xx.xx.xx.xx with the real IP address of your server.) Click “Open” and it will connect to the server as root and prompt you for the password. Now you’re in, and feeling the power yourself. Right? Welcome to your new server Regardless of your local operating system, after connecting to your server you’ll have entered the world of Linux. Welcome to Ubuntu 11.04 (GNU/Linux 2.6.38-15-virtual x86_64) * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/ System information as of Tue May 8 22:40:51 CEST 2012 System load: 0.0 Processes: 67 Usage of /: 2.0% of 33.56GB Users logged in: 1 Memory usage: 11% IP address for eth0: xx.xx.xx.xx Swap usage: 0% Graph this data and manage this system at https://landscape.canonical.com/ Last login: Tue May 8 20:20:58 2012 from xx-xx-xx-xx.example.net root@KATBOX001:~# The last line that says root@KATBOX001:~# will likely say something else, maybe root@XYZ001:~#. This is your command prompt. The flashing cursor is where you can type commands on the server. As soon as you type a command, like uptime, and hit enter, the server runs that command. It then reports back any response and gives you a new prompt. root@KATBOX001:~# uptime 18:36:24 up 1 min, 1 user, load average: 0.15, 0.07, 0.03 root@KATBOX001:~# Change your password After you have recovered from the excitement that you have root access to a server that you can do whatever you want with, you should probably take a moment to change your password. There is a better and more secure option for authenticating to your server, but I’ll write about ssh keys later. For now, change your password using this command: While you’re recovering from the excitement inherent to gaining root access to a server you can do whatever you want with, you should probably take a moment to change your password. There is a better and more secure option for authenticating to your server with SSH keys, but I’ll write about that later. For now, change your password using this command: root@KATBOX001:~# passwd Type in your new password; make it long and unguessable. Update Ubuntu The second thing to do with any newly installed Linux server is to upgrade it to the latest packages. This will install any securty and bug fixes since the last release. Type the following: root@KATBOX001:~# aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade -y You’ll see lines scrolling by as Ubuntu upgrades itself. You are now the admin of your own linux server. You’ll see lines scrolling by as Ubuntu upgrades itself. Being the admin of your own linux server is fun, isn’t it? Where do we go from here? There are many directions we could take. Many would say the next step would be to create a non-privileged user account and learn to use the sudo command. That is important, especially for multi user servers and servers with important business information. But to me, seedboxes are basically disposable. If I mess up, the worst that can happen is I have to reinstall. I should note here that reducing the complexity for absolute beginners is central as we start this tutorial series. So don’t be nervous - live on the edge. We’ll just play around as root for a while. ;-) In the next post, we will install a BitTorrent client and start seeding some real torrents.

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A dame to kill a campaign for... The MPAA has banned a new poster for Sin City: A Dame To Kill Forbecause you can see a bit too much of Eva Green… Specifically disapproving of the “curve of under breast and dark nipple/areola circle visible through sheer gown,” the MPAA’s decision to ban the provocative poster seems like a pretty blatent marketing stunt ahead of Sin City’s 29 August release date. Okay, so you can see a bit of a “curve”, but it’s not like we haven’t seen it all before – with Green hating shirts even more than Matthew McConaughey in most of her movies. Still, don’t expect to see the same complaints levied at Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin or Bruce Willis in their character posters…

A new shade of Grey... Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo have signed on to write and direct The Grey Man. Long, long in development, the adaptation of Mark Greaney’s espionage novel has been passed around Hollywood desks for years. Originally set up with James Grey directing Brad Pitt in the main role, both have long since passed – with the Russo brothers now looking for their new lead. A spy thriller in the classic ’70s mould (a style that heavily influenced the Russo’s take on Captain America), it’s the story of a CIA spook turned assassin who goes on the run to try and save his daughters. With producer Joe Roth reckoning The Grey Man could be “the nextBourne movie series”, it sounds like we're in for another trilogy...

Last month, the major Hollywood studios demanded millions from Megupload and its former employees in a brand new lawsuit. With the prospect that Kim Dotcom's seized assets may soon be released in both New Zealand and Hong Kong, 20th Century Fox and friends have moved to freeze his assets pending the outcome of their case. In early April, Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, Paramount Pictures, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. teamed up to file a new lawsuit in a Virginia District Court. Their targets were old adversaries Megaupload, Kim Dotcom and associates Mathias Ortmann and Bram Van Der Kolk. Running in parallel with the ongoing criminal proceedings initiated by the U.S. Government, the complaint followed much of the same path. Earlier this month, Megaupload’s legal team responded by asking the court to freeze the MPAA’s case in order to protect their clients’ Fifth Amendment rights not to implicate themselves in advance of the U.S. government’s criminal case against them. In the period since both sides’ legal teams have been in discussion over the potential terms of any stay. But, according to papers filed in a Virginia court yesterday, 20th Century Fox are concerned that Dotcom’s fortune could soon be back in the entrepreneur’s hands. Megaupload’s and Dotcom’s millions were seized following the now-notorious 2012 raid. However, last month the New Zealand High Court said it would not extend the foreign restraining order against his assets. That decision was quickly appealed by the Crown, but the possibility remains that Dotcom could soon regain his wealth and legally dispose of it. The studios want to stop that from happening. “If the New Zealand Government loses the appeal, the assets will be unfrozen, and there is a significant risk that they will then be immediately dissipated,” the studios’ lawyers state in yesterday’s filing. Led by Warner Bros., the studios add that since Dotcom and his associates “have or have had sophisticated global business interests” and with that an ability to “move assets offshore quickly and immediately”, they are taking legal action to try and prevent that. “To ensure that Defendants’ New Zealand assets remain frozen even if the New Zealand Government loses the pending appeal, several of the Plaintiffs have initiated civil proceedings in New Zealand to freeze Defendants’ assets pending a judgment in the [studios' civil case against Megaupload/Dotcom].” But the fight to secure Dotcom’s and Megaupload’s cash isn’t confined only to New Zealand. Hong Kong is another battleground and the studios are determined to narrow the options for release of assets there too. “In addition to opposing extension of the asset freeze in New Zealand, Defendants are also seeking to unfreeze their assets in Hong Kong, which have also been frozen pursuant to this Court’s restraining orders issued in the Criminal Action,” the studio’s lawyers write. “If Defendants are successful in their efforts to unfreeze their assets in Hong Kong, there is a significant risk that those assets will be dissipated in very short order. Plaintiffs are monitoring developments in Hong Kong and assessing whether they may need to take legal action there to further preserve Defendants’ assets.” In conclusion the studios state that while they do not oppose Megaupload’s request for a stay, the terms must not preclude them taking action to freeze the worldwide assets of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom. But of course, just days after the studios filed their lawsuit in April, the RIAA jumped on board too by filing a a substantially similar suit against the same defendants, again demanding millions in damages. Yesterday the labels also made their voices heard in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in respect of Megaupload’s motion for a similar stay in their case. Although penned by different law firms, the labels’ filings are much the same as those from the studios. In a slightly different conclusion, the labels oppose a stay order, but note that if one is granted it should not disallow them from seeking to “preserve the Defendants’ worldwide assets.” Further hearings on the fate of the currently seized millions are scheduled for July 10 in Hong Kong and in the New Zealand High Court tomorrow.

The MPAA, RIAA and five major U.S. Internet providers launched their six-strikes Copyright Alert System last year, and today they revealed details on the magnitude of the anti-piracy measures. Thus far more than 1.3 million anti-piracy alerts have been sent out, and roughly 30% of all warned subscribers were caught a second time. February last year, five U.S. Internet providers started sending copyright alerts to customers who use BitTorrent to pirate movies, TV-shows and music. These efforts are part of the Copyright Alert System, an anti-piracy plan that aims to educate the public. Through a series of warnings suspected pirates are informed that their connections are being used to share copyrighted material without permission, and told where they can find legal alternatives. These alerts start out friendly in tone, but serious repeat infringers face a temporary disconnection from the Internet or other mitigation measures. The ISPs and copyright holders believe that the voluntary agreement is effective, but experts have their doubts. According to a report released today by the Center for Copyright Information (CCIwhich oversees the program, the Copyright Alert System has had a significant effect. For the first time the group has published actual numbers, covering the first ten months of the program ending December last year. As can be seen in the table below, 722,820 account holders received a first strike or copyright alert. Of this group, nearly 30% were caught again, generating a second alert. A total of 60,477 subscribers were particularly persistent and reached the mitigation phase after their fifth alert, which is 8% of everyone who received at least one warning. Around 1.3 million notices were sent out during the first 10 months, a number that will double in the coming year according to the report. It is relatively hard to interpret these numbers, but the repeat warning percentage of 30% is quite high, especially when one takes into account that people who received their first alert during the last month had little time to generate a second one. In addition, the detection rate is relatively low, not to mention subscribers’ use of anonymizing tools. It appears that U.S. pirates are relatively persistent. In France, for example, only 9% of all the warned copyright infringers received two warnings, and that was after two full years. Also, only 0.029% of the French got a third strike. While these “strikes” programs have their differences, the high number of second warnings in the U.S. stands out. One of the issues that may play a role here is that some people don’t read the emails that come in at their ISP address. The CCI is nonetheless convinced that copyright alerts are able to deter pirates, some at least. “We are encouraged by the initial data from the Copyright Alert System’s first 10 months suggesting that the program has the potential to move the needle in deterring copyright infringement,” CCI’s Jill Lesser said commenting on the results. “Our initial research into consumer attitudes – along with what we have seen in our own data – shows that consumers do respond to this kind of educational system that alerts them to infringing activity on their account and helps them find the content they want easily and legally,” Lesser adds. Another figure of interest is the number of appeals. After three or four alerts subscribers have the option to appeal the evidence at the American Arbitration Association. Only 0.27% of the eligible subscribers did so, which translates into a few hundred people. The most often cited reason to appeal was “unauthorized use” of the subscriber’s account. According to the report there were just 47 successful challenges decided in favor of the accused subscriber, which is 18% of all appeals. Overall, the participating ISPs and copyright holders are all positive about the results so far. According to the RIAA’s Steve Marks the program is a respectful and effective way to deal with the piracy problem. “We are proud of the program’s accomplishments and delighted by our successful partnership with the ISP community. This report confirms that the CAS is working – it’s reliable, respectful of consumers, and an effective way to let them know about all the legitimate alternatives in the marketplace,” Marks says. Despite the enthusiasm, whether the program has been effective enough to put a real dent in local piracy rates has yet to be seen. Last year we reported that instead of kicking their download habit, many people took measures to prevent themselves from being monitored. In addition, we observed that U.S. traffic to The Pirate Bay did not decline after the system was implemented. In any case, it’s good to see that the first set of data is now available to the public. It will be interesting to see how the current trends develop over time.

Attorney General George Brandis has been put under pressure over behind-the-scenes discussions on the introduction of a three strikes regime to Australia. A largely awkward exchange with the Green Party in the Senate this week only fueled growing feelings that being transparent on negotiations is not high on the Government's list of priorities. In a speech back in February, Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis indicated that the Government had plans to crack down on Internet piracy. Not only was consideration being given to the introduction of a “three strikes” style regime, but ISPs could be required to block access to so-called ‘pirate’ sites. This week, in a session of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, the topic was raised by Senator Scott Ludlam of the Australian Greens. With the Attorney General and his team sat immediately opposite him, Ludlam asked Brandis about current Government copyright policy. “Unlike the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, France and many other comparable countries, Australia lacks any effective protection against online piracy,” Brandis said. “Australia, I’m sorry to say, is the worst offender of any country in the world when it comes to piracy, and i’m very concerned that the legitimate rights and interests of rightsholders and content creators are being compromised by that activity.” Who is helping Brandis shape his anti-piracy opinions? “Where are you getting your information from to form your views, who are you consulting and through what vehicle are you forming your views that you’ve just presented to us?” Ludlam asked. “Well, those are my views. I mean, the views that I expressed in the speech to which you referred, legal and philosophical views in particular,” Brandis said. Ludlam then asked if consumer groups were being involved in the process, as is the case in the United States “strikes” system. “Have you spoken to any consumer groups, such as Choice or ACANN, who would probably contest your view that a graduated response or three-strikes or any of those kinds of propositions…..” A clearly irritated Brandis interrupted, but Ludlam wasn’t giving an inch, continuing: “….or any of those countries that you’ve just listed at the outset that do have some version of those schemes, that actually they’re not working very well in those jurisdictions and there might be other ways to tackle the problem more effectively, but still preserve artists’ rights to be paid for their work.” Avoiding answering the question again, Brandis said that he and his colleagues speak to stakeholders all the time. Answer the question – are consumer groups involved? “Does that include Choice, for example?” Ludlam persisted. Brandis said that his team has consulted with “industry leaders” in the United Kingdom and the United States to learn from their experiences. That wasn’t the answer Ludlam was looking for. “I know industry leaders have very strong views on these things, but i’m asking you about groups like Choice or ACANN or others that might represent consumer interests or the public interest,” he said. “There is a very strong public interest in the protection of private property and that includes the protection of intellectual property,” Brandis responded evasively. “So you’re not going to answer the question,” Ludlam said rhetorically. Clearly irritated with the line of questioning and despite being the one to interrupt, Brandis then gave Ludlam a mini lecture on not interrupting him and proceeded, again, not to answer the question. The Greens Senator wasn’t letting go. “Have you met with Choice or ACAN in the process of forming your views?” he insisted. As the exchange continued it became very clear indeed that while Brandis was pretty sharp on how his discussions had gone with “stake holders”, he was vague on any discussions with groups that should be involved to protect the public interest. Is three-strikes still on the agenda? Switching towards a member of Brandis’ team, Ludlam asked directly whether or not the Government’s copyright task group was looking at a three-strikes style regime to deal with online piracy? “Yes, that’s one option,” came the response. However, while the option is being considered, the Government clearly faces problems. In response to Ludlam asking whether talks were underway between rightsholders and service providers, a member of Brandis’ team gave a one word answer: “No.” The problem, the Attorney General said, stemmed back from the iiNet ruling in 2012. Since then there had been less willingness on the part of some ISPs to come to the table. However, one ISP has been very helpful lately. “Earlier in the month I had a very long conversation [with executives from] Telstra. If I may say so publicly I would say that Telstra’s contribution to this issue, and their willingness to work to find a solution to the piracy issue, which is really unaddressed in Australia, has been very commendable,” Brandis said. “We want to see if the various industry participants can be brought to the table and find themselves in agreement rather than having a solution imposed from on high.” So who is pulling the strings, who is making the decisions? And then, just before the end of the session, Brandis undermined confidence in government transparency again in response to Ludlam’s questioning on how the issue would now be progressed. “The matter is under active consideration right now. I had a meeting with certain decision makers in this matter as recently as 7pm last night,” Brandis said. So who are those key decision makers? “I’m not going to be disclosing in a public forum who I meet with, senator,” Brandis told Ludlam. With anonymous “stake holders” and “decision makers” commanding Brandis’ ear, no consumer groups front and center, and only Telsta, the part-owner of pay TV company Foxtel, worthy of praise on the ISP front, a voluntary agreement on strikes in Australia seems as far away as ever.

Spotify's chief in Australia has hit back at suggestions that reasonably priced streaming services have done little to reduce piracy. “If you look at the main audience that is on Spotify, a lot of them are former pirates," Kate Vale said. "There are teenagers who have potentially never paid for their music before, and probably never will." In the continuing piracy debate one thing has been established beyond reasonable doubt. If an entertainment producer wants to make any dent in piracy, at the very least they’re going to have to make their products readily available at a fair price. This argument has gathered serious momentum in Australia during the past few years, with local consumers regularly criticizing international TV and movie companies for shipping products Down Under months after release and then charging unrealistic prices. But in a recent opinion piece, the principal analyst at local music royalty collection outfit APRA AMCOS disputed whether the arrival of services like Spotify that give consumers what they want, have actually done anything to reduce piracy rates. “Music’s had everything everybody now wants for television shows, such as Game of Thrones, for a couple of years: availability, access and a reasonable price. But the piracy issue still has not been solved,” Andrew Harris wrote. “In fact, results last month from our ongoing national research show that music piracy levels – just as they were almost two years ago – still sit at around the same level as that of movies and television shows.” Noting that Spotify offers content in Australia at the moment it’s released around the world and does so at one of the best prices, Harris arrives at a familiar conclusion. “We’ve heard it all before. No matter how loud the minority might shout it in anger as the answer, it’s impossible to compete with free.” Unsurprisingly that notion doesn’t sit well with Spotify, a company that was designed from the ground up to compete with piracy. Responding to Harris’s assertions in Australian Financial Review, Spotify Australia and New Zealand chief Kate Vale said that the company’s experiences told a different story. “We do believe that access, availability and price does contribute and is the answer and we have proven this in other markets across Europe and particularly in Sweden where we have seen a 30 per cent reduction in piracy since we launched about six years ago,” Vale said. Cracking Sweden was undoubtedly a major feat given the country’s long association with Internet piracy and Vale believes that Spotify now has the right formula to attract the most aggressive file-sharers – and make money from them. “If you look at the main audience that is on Spotify, a lot of them are former pirates. There are teenagers who have potentially never paid for their music before, and probably never will,” she said. “If we can get them on to a service that is free but legal, and they are contributing through our advertising on that free tier, then it is giving money back into the industry that they are just never going to get before.” The ad-supported tier of Spotify is undoubtedly a great incentive to get people to try the service. Globally the company says that it converts around a quarter of free users to premium subscribers but Australia actually tops that with 31%, suggesting that Aussies are happier than most to part with their hard-earned cash in exchange for a good product.

New research from Tennessee Tech University shows that certain forms of online piracy are linked to Internet addiction related problems. In addition, the research shows that high school students who pirate are more likely to have deviant or criminal friends. Over the past decade a lot of research has looked at the effects of online piracy, particularly on the revenues of various entertainment industries. Increasingly researchers are also examining the sociological links, causes and effects of copyright infringement. A new study conducted by Tennessee Tech University’s Jordana Navarro is a good example. With a large survey Navarro and her colleagues investigated the link between piracy, internet addiction and deviant tendencies. The results were published in an articletitled “Addicted to pillaging in cyberspace: Investigating the role of internet addiction in digital piracy,” which appears in the latest issue of the Computers and Human Behavior journal. The researchers conducted a large-scale survey among 1,617 students from 9th through 12th grade. The participants were asked a wide range of questions, covering their piracy habits, as well as scales to measure Internet addiction and association with deviant friends. The findings on the piracy side are comparable to many previous studies and show that movie piracy is most prevalent. Nearly 30% of the students admitted to pirating movies, and this percentage went down to 15% and 13% for music and software piracy respectively. One of the more interesting findings is the link between piracy and Internet addiction. Here, the researchers found that students who have more internet addiction related issues are more likely to pirate software. “Based on the results of the study, we can determine that high school students who have Internet-related problems due to addiction are more likely to commit a specific form of piracy involving the illegal downloading of software,” the researchers write. The same group of software pirates were also more likely to hang out with deviant friends. This measure includes friends who pirate, those who threaten others with violence online, those who send nude pictures, and those who have used another person’s credit card or ID without permission. “Not surprisingly, youth who committed this form of piracy were also more likely to have deviant peers. In other words, their behaviors were influenced by friends who committed similar or other deviant acts,” the researchers conclude. Interestingly, the link between Internet addiction and copyright infringement was only found for software piracy. High school students who pirated movies and music were not more likely to have these type of problems. They were, however, more likely to associate with deviant or criminal friends. “The remaining two forms of piracy for juveniles are not predicted by Internet addiction based on our findings. However, the results did support past findings that deviant peer association and piracy behaviors are significant related,” the researchers write. According to the researchers the results are a good first step in identifying how various problems and deviant behaviors are linked, which could be helpful to shape future educational efforts. Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t offer any explanations for the differences in the link between Internet addiction and various types of piracy. One likely explanation is that those who show more signs of Internet addiction simply spend more time on the computer, and are therefore more interested in software piracy and software in general. For now, it appears that some more follow-up research is needed before it’s warranted to send the first batch of kids to piracy rehab.

The UK's top IP advisor has published recommendations on how search engines should deal with online piracy. The document envisions demoting sites based on numbers of copyright notices received, removal of others entirely after acknowledging ISP blocking orders, and warning consumers away from sites without industry certification. Mike Weatherley, a Conservative MP and Intellectual Property Adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, has become increasingly involved in the online piracy debate in recent months. Weatherley’s current focus is on the role search engines can play in reducing infringement. In contrast to the approach taken by the entertainment industries, the MP has taken a much more positive stance when speaking of Google’s efforts thus far. In a new report, however, Weatherley lays out often far-reaching recommendations that puts him almost completely in sync with industry demands. The report, which Weatherley says is intended to stimulate debate, begins with praise for Google for “engaging positively” during its creation. Its recommendations are directed at all search engines, but as the market leader Google is called on to show leadership. Where Google goes, others will follow, Weatherley believes. Search results – demoting illegal sites The music and movie industries have long complained that illegal content is too easy to find and for a long time they’ve been putting Google under pressure to do something about that. Weatherley believes that by working with two existing sources of information – Google’s Transparency Report and the recently formed Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s infringing site “blacklist” – Google has a ready formula at hand. The BPI’s input suggests that when a search engine has received 10,000 infringement notices for a site, that site should no longer appear on the first page of search results. Any that receive 100,000 notices should no longer appear in the first 10 pages. However, it’s envisioned that “certificates” could be handed out to some sites to help them avoid being relegated – more on that later. Voluntarily complying with site-blocking court orders In the UK around 30 ‘pirate’ sites are now blocked via the UK’s major ISPs after both the BPI and MPA went to court to obtain injunctions. While these injunctions only legally apply to their formal targets (the ISPs), in future Weatherley would like Google to acknowledge the existence of injunctions by immediately removing the affected sites from all search results. The MP acknowledges that this may require a change in the law. Accepting takedown notices for AutoComplete terms For some time Google has been accepting applications from rightsholders to remove “infringing” terms from its AutoComplete service. Weatherley now wants to see this process formalized. “Given that Google has accepted that Autocomplete for pirate sites should not occur, it seems uncontroversial to recommend that steps are taken to continue to ensure this does not happen,” he writes. AutoComplete takedown notices should be included in Google’s Transparency Report, the MP says. Incorporating “Trust Marks” and “Warnings” to inform consumers The idea here is that somehow Google will consider the reputation of a site when formulating its algorithms and when it presents its search results. “Trust Marks” would be used to denote a legal and licensed resource while “Warnings” would be used to highlight an illegal site. The exact process through which a site could become trusted is unclear, but suggestions from the BPI indicate that a “certificate” could be obtained from its own Music Matters project to indicate that a resource is “clean”. Similar certificates could be obtained by sites that receive a lot of takedown notices but operate legally (YouTube for example) so that they are whitelisted by Google and not downgraded in search results. In terms of warning against unlicensed sites, rightsholders suggest that Google takes note of PIPCU’s “pirate” site blacklist by either negatively marking affected sites in search results or removing them completely. Referencing a TorrentFreak article published last month reporting how Google had signaled that Demonoid was a potentially dangerous site, Weatherley said Google can do more to protect consumers. “Google has not only proven in relation to malware on certain torrent sites that it has the technical capability within its systems to deliver consumer messaging in search listings, but that such messages can be an effective deterrent to consumers,” the MP explains. Licensed services should do more to help themselves in search results While the music and movie industries complain endlessly about “pirate” results appearing above their own licensed content, not much time is given to explaining why that’s the case. Weatherley reveals that Google has made a request for movie and music streaming services behind a paywall to allow Google to crawl their sites in order for consumers to be able to see them in results. For some services, apparently that’s not currently allowed. “Google maintains that it is perfectly possible to create crawlable pages for each movie or album title in a security-friendly way. I am told by rights holders that there are potential security issues around making licensed services crawlable and they have concerns with this proposal,” Weatherley notes. Conclusion While Weatherley is currently praising Google in order to keep the tone positive and the discussion flowing, the IP advisor clearly believes that the search engine is capable of assisting rightsholders much more but is failing to do so. The MP’s report has no official standing in respect of government policy but it addresses most if not all of the movie and music industries’ main problems with Google. Expect this document to become a point of reference in the months to come.

BitTorrent Inc, the parent company of the popular file-sharing applications uTorrent and BitTorrent, is demanding $5.8 million in damages from its German namesake. The San Francisco company accuses Bittorrent Marketing GMBH of misleading prospective users and intercepting sensitive company email. As the owners of two of the most-used BitTorrent clients on the Internet, BitTorrent Inc. is catering to an audience of close to 200 million regular users. Needless to say there is plenty of interest in the BitTorrent brand, and in some cases this demand is being exploited by third-party companies. One of the outfits that has operated in this space is the German-based Bittorrent Marketing GMBH. The company owns the German and European trademark for Bittorrent and has several related domain names such as Bit-Torent.com, Bit-Torrent.com and Bitorrent.net. These domains have been mainly used for advertising, pointing people to paid products. This has been a thorn in the side for BitTorrent Inc. who launched a lawsuit against its German nemesis two years ago. Since the German company and its owner Harald Hochmann failed to respond in court, BitTorrent is moving for a default judgment. In a filing submitted this week they demand $5.8 million in damages. “BitTorrent filed this action to put an end to Defendant’s use of BitTorrent’s trademarks to promote what Defendant touts as an ‘advertising affiliate program’ used to ‘post ads and earn commissions..’,” the company explains. According to the complaint the sites don’t link people to the free software, but to sites where people have to pay for a mere redirection to third-party services. “For example, after paying over $50 to sign up for ultimate-downloadscenter.com, U.S. users are redirected to third-party websites of other digital media providers, like Netflix.com and Hulu.com, and invited to sign up for membership with those services.” These “scams” are a problem for BitTorrent Inc. as they reflect negatively on the company’s brand. However, there is another issue with the domains. Since the German company owns a lot of domains based on misspellings, they occasionally get emails that are intended for the U.S. company. “Hochmann admitted that his company registered many misspellings of BITTORRENT as or as part of domain names, and that, as a result of registering these domain names, he was able to intercept internal emails of BitTorrent when employees and executives of BitTorrent misspelled “bittorrent” in typing the domain name,” the company explains in its motion. Among other emails, the owner of Bittorrent Marketing GMBH obtained internal financial projections from early 2008. Based on this intercepted communication Hochmann allegedly suggested that BitTorrent Inc. should buy the German company for millions of dollars. Through the U.S. federal court BitTorrent Inc. now hopes to obtain an injunction against its German namesake. In their motion for summary judgment they demand a total of $5.8 million in damages and in addition BitTorrent Inc. wants ownership of all the BitTorrent related domain names. “BitTorrent requests an award of statutory damages in the amount of $100,000 per domain name for each of the 58 Infringing Domain Names identified in the accompanying memorandum of points and authorities, for a total statutory damages award of $5,800,000.” Interestingly, while Hochmann and his company failed to respond to the complaint in court, he did release a long statement and supporting documents which are available via the Bittorrent.eu domain. In the statement Hochmann details his version of the dispute, which started more than a decade ago. Among other things, he disputes that he offered BitTorrent Inc. the opportunity to buy his company for millions, and he points to domain disputes his company won in the past against BitTorrent Inc. Talking to TorrentFreak, Hochmann said that in a week or two he will issue a more detailed response explaining why not he, but BitTorrent Inc. are the “scammers.” For the U.S. case this may be too late, due to the lack of response in the past it’s likely that the default judgment will be entered. It’s now up to the judge to decide what the exact punishment should be.

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Latvia continues its clamp down on BitTorrent trackers, as two more sites have been pulled offline by the local police. Whether the attempts will prove effective is doubtful. File.lv, Latvia's largest BitTorrent tracker was taken down last summer but has since returned, despite an ongoing lawsuit. A few months ago we reported that File.lv, Latvia’s largest BitTorrent community went dark after a joint effort by the Latvian Economic Police and the IFPI-affiliated Latvian Music Producers Association, otherwise known as LAmpA. While the site has since returned, local authorities continue their efforts to shut down further BitTorrent trackers. Outlaw.lv, one of the largest trackers in Latvia is currently offline following pressure from the Economic Police, while rumors say that one of the top uploaders was detained for a few hours. “Economic Police has shut down our project. Outlaw LV will be back in a new way and with a new mission,” reads a message on the front page. It is clear though that the authorities aim to take more sites offline. Danger.lv is another tracker that has received a letter from the police, and they decided to pull the plug voluntarily, for the time being. Similar to last summer, several other BitTorrent trackers became extra cautious after the renewed attention from the authorities. Bithack.lv was one of the trackers that took action. The site didn’t close however, but now serves recipes instead of torrent files. TorrentFreak spoke with one admin of a local BitTorrent tracker, who informed us that they have also been receiving letters from anti-piracy organizations. “A handful of popular trackers are taking severe countermeasures to avoid any possibility of takedown and continue to serve the community for now, hoping that no takedowns will follow,” he said. As with many of the takedown attempts in other parts of the world, lobbyists from the entertainment industry are the ones tipping off the police, and assisting in ‘evidence gathering’ and even raids. In Latvia it’s LAmpA, but the BPI and IFPI have also been assisting the authorities, most notably with the raid on the popular music tracker OiNK. Needless to say, these anti-piracy outfits are not the most objective partner when it comes to solving these type of digital ‘offenses’, and it’s worrisome to see how they appear to be increasingly intertwined with local authorities.

In the fall of last year The Pirate Bay took its tracker offline. Luckily, for the stability of the BitTorrent ecosystem several new trackers emerged to take its place. Time for us to provide an overview of the largest public BitTorrent trackers currently around. The BitTorrent landscape has changed dramatically in the past 12 months. The two largest BitTorrent trackers today didn’t exist a year ago, and the top tracker of last year has shut down. The upside is that all these changes went by relatively unnoticed to the millions of downloaders. Despite claims that millions of BitTorrent downloads would cease to work if a major BitTorrent tracker closed down, most downloaders today don’t even notice when a tracker stops working. Thanks to technologies such as DHT and PEX central trackers have become a luxury good to some degree. Indeed, larger torrents with thousands of peers will work just fine without a central tracker. But the majority of torrents out there only have a handful of peers and for these files a central tracker is still an essential part of the downloading process. It’s therefore good to know that several new players took the place of The Pirate Bay’s tracker when it shut down last year. Below we show a list of the five largest public BitTorrent trackers based on the number of torrents and peers (downloaders+uploaders) they track. 5 Largest BitTorrent Trackers, June 2009 # Tracker Torrents Peers Software torrentfreak.com 1 PublicBitTorrent 2,484,145 21,694,091 Opentracker 2 OpenBitTorrent 2,388,738 21,186,589 Opentracker 3 Denis.Stalker 1,614,356 10,527,993 Opentracker 4 1337x.org 302,799 4,889,991 XBT 5 Torrent.to 326,467 3,205,170 Opentracker The first thing that stands out in the top five above is that the first three spots are taken by standalone trackers that do not have a torrent index or search engine attached to them. These three trackers are responsible for the coordination of millions of public downloads on BitTorrent but do not provide any torrents on their sites like The Pirate Bay used to do. PublicBitTorrent and OpenBitTorrent, number one and two in the list, are both relatively new trackers that emerged after The Pirate Bay announced that it would sell the site last year. This sale eventually failed to go through, but The Pirate Bay did close its tracker so both trackers became a very welcome addition to the BitTorrent ecosystem. Another observation is that there is a lot of weight on the shoulders of the top three trackers. Although there are close to 50,000 known BitTorrent trackers, only a fraction of these are active, and of these only a few dozen track more than 1,000 torrent files. Without the five trackers in the list above most of the smaller public torrents could quickly become unavailable. Although trackers in the top five are all public ones, there are a few private ones that should be in this list if it was only based on the number of torrents tracked. The music tracker What.cd, for example, currently tracks more than 800,000 torrents alone. A dazzling number that puts the site in fourth place based on the number of torrents, not peers. For BitTorrent’s long tail content reliable public trackers are still invaluable. The good news is that the ecosystem is better off than a year ago when The Pirate Bay was carrying this burden alone, but it’s far from bulletproof yet.

In recent weeks a new Demonoid-inspired standalone tracker entered the BitTorrent ecosystem with a bang. Blessed by The Pirate Bay, Demonii has quickly become one of the most used BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. TorrentFreak decided to catch up with the admin to find out how it all came to be. The Internet is littered with torrent indexes and search engines, all offering a wide range of content to their visitors. However, for this content to travel from A to B the BitTorrent ecosystem needs reliable trackers. Unfortunately, good public trackers are harder to find. For several years PublicBitTorrent and OpenBitTorrent have been dominating this space, coordinating the communication between dozens of millions of peers every day. The two trackers surfaced after The Pirate Bay shut down its BitTorrent tracker back in 2009 and haven’t seen much competition since. In recent weeks, however, a new tracker called “Demonii” entered the scene. Similar to other standalone trackers Demonii doesn’t host any torrents. TorrentFreak caught up with the operator behind this new kid in town, and he told us that the name is inspired by Demonoid. “I planned to revive Demonoid because they disappeared so quickly, so I registered the domains demonii.com, net and org,” Demonii’s Qarizma tells TorrentFreak. “Then I actually realized that for me it wasn’t a good idea to start something like Demonoid. It would get me into trouble which I’m not interested in. So I decided to start the Demonii Tracker Project.” After a slow start, traffic to the new tracker suddenly experienced a massive spike in traffic two weeks ago. Overnight it went from dealing with a handful of peers to millions, a surge that can be solely attributed to The Pirate Bay. As it turned out, TPB had added the new tracker to all their magnet links, as they also do with OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent. Needless to say, Demonii wasn’t prepared and the newly gained attention quickly took the tracker offline. “I didn’t expect it, Demonii was tracking about 100 torrents for testing and debugging, then I heard TPB used Demonii as tracker. That explained why my server went down,” Qarizma tells us. However, Demonii did welcome the Pirate Bay blessing and after moving to a new server it quickly recovered. At the time of writing Demonii tracks 875,365 torrents and handles 4,165,485 peers, which makes it the fifth largest BitTorrent tracker on the Internet. Like most of the other large BitTorrent trackers Demonii runs on the beerware licensed Opentracker software. Demonii’s operator made some small modifications to make it run smoothly on his VPS, which he can expand later if needed. “Demonii currently runs on a KVM based VPS on my own nodes. The main node is a Xeon X5677, and the VPS specs are 512MB RAM and 1000Mhz is still enough to run it now. When it needs more I can simply allocate more resources to the VPS.” In addition to operating the Demonii tracker the owner also offers privacy protection software that may come in handy for some. DPROTECT The free application named “dProtect” is a blocklist addon for uTorrent. It bans a long list of IP-ranges that may be connected to monitoring companies, government agencies and other outfits that may interfere with BitTorrent traffic. “dProtect is our software released to increase people’s privacy on the internet. The software adds a layer of protection when you are downloading using uTorrent,” Qarizma says. The dProtect software uses a list of ranges maintained by The Blocklist Group. Similar to other blocklists, the list is only partially effective. It will be interesting to see if Demonii remains among the top trackers in the months to come. If The Pirate Bay keeps supporting it there is no doubt that the new kid in town will stick around for a while.

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Soprano Soraya Mafi has left a past as a Selfridges shop assistant to embark upon a career in operaWhere does she come from? The name may be exotically Persian — her father emigrated from Iran during the 1979 revolution — but Soraya Mafi is a petite and effervescent 25-year-old lyric soprano from Bury, who grew up “wanting to be a Disney princess and mad about Julie Andrews”. How did she land up in opera? In her early teens, dance was Mafi’s passion, but an injury stalled her ambitions. Then at 15, she she won a prestigious singing prize and went to study with Sandra Dugdale at the Royal Northern College of Music.Was it plain sailing from there? Mafi had “a tough time” breaking into the industry. “I worked at Selfridge’s to help pay my fees and they generously sponsored me”, she says, “but it all got on top of me, so I took two years off to sort myself out and met my lovely boyfriend, who wasn’t into classical music and thought that opera was just “singing cover versions.” What was her big break? Mafi returned to study at the Royal College of Music with Janis Kelly, when Grange Park’s director Wasfi Kani spotted her in a student show and cast her as the ebullient Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites. This professional debut won her glowing reviews, and she is now back at Grange Park to sing First Niece in Jeremy Sams’ new production of Britten’s Peter Grimes. “Jeremy is wonderful,” she says, “ so humble yet so in control — and he is a mine of hilarious anecdotes!” What next? After Peter Grimes Mafi will embark on well-earned backpacking holiday in South-east Asia. A major role in Mozart’s Il Re Pastore at the Chatelet in Paris follws after Christmas, and then she makes her ENO debut in Mike Leigh’s production of The Pirates of Penzance. “But I don’t need goals. My dream is just to make a living as a singer. Doing something I love is quite enough.”